After ‘‘cowboy bebop & eric’s trip’ (what we labelled “a characteristically off-the-wall and hyperactive slice of electronic (anti-)pop”) and ‘return of jafar‘ (“sits in the sweet spot between unapologetic nostalgia and contemporary neurosis, its tone unafraid of self-deprecation yet so bright and bouncy that it seems to simultaneously conquer it”), applied communications is back with new single ‘tarot sans tinseltown’ ahead of new full-length applied communications bites the big one, coming via Rare Noodles and Bar/None Records. We described the album as sitting in the centre of “a Venn diagram consisting of early Casiotone For the Painfully Alone, Emperor X and Dan Deacon,” and while the latest track could be said to conforms to this label, it also shows the limitations of comparisons when dealing with an act so singular. But however idiosyncratic the track might seem, it is only bringing to life the bizarre details of the time and place which inspired it. The song is about “an impromptu trip to LA during a depressive spiral,” Max Wood describes:

during the trip, pope benedict came out of the conclave and i saw beck at the scientology celebrity center while taking advantage of their free brunch. (i’m not a scientologist, don’t worry!) the song leans on LA’s weird history (eatonville, dw griffith, amy mcpherson) as a well of metaphors for the mental health precipice i was on at the time.”

applied communications bites the big one will be released on the 25th September via Rare Noodles and Bar/None Records and you can pre-order it via the applied communications Bandcamp page.

Black Duck – Funeral in my Brain

Over recent months, we’ve covered a couple of singles from the upcoming album between Chicago‘s Black Duck (that’s Douglas McCombs on bass/guitar, Bill MacKay on guitar and Charles Rumback on drums) and Basque musician Elena Setién, with both ‘Land of Many Eyes‘ and ‘Connects By Water‘ proving how stimulating collaboration can be. “[Meeting Setién], the trio felt they had discovered someone else clearly attuned to the Black Duck spirit,” as we wrote, “and have taken this forward to not only invigorate the project, but to reimagine its very boundaries [becoming] a quartet in order to bottle the lightning of this live performance.” With the release fast approaching via Thrill Jockey, the outfit have now unveiled new track ‘Funeral in my Brain’. The song is inspired by the Emily Dickinson poem for which it is named, elevating the emotional landscape of the work into something larger and more forceful, an almost cinematic vista which performs a kind of transubstantiation, the fear of death morphed into its own form of transcendence. “This one is a funeral, but a surrealistic one in some way,” as Setién explains. “In a sense, as a performer, and as a listener, I lose fear of death and just embrace it.”

Black Duck with Elena Setién will be released on the 28th August via Thrill Jockey Records and you can pre-order it now from the Black Duck Bandcamp page.

Burley – Change

Following on from a self-titled EP released last year, Brooklyn folk project Burley are teasing their upcoming full-length with a brand new single ‘Change’. Consisting of Antony Jeffares, Austin Chappell, John Dockery and Sam Lopane, the band make what they call ‘gas station core’ A style of folk rock which pairs the rawness and twang of alt-country with an extra dose of wistfulness, certain to appeal to fans of Fust, Friendship and Sluice. ‘Change’ finds the quartet at their most confident yet, able to confront thorny personal themes with a tone that’s as assured as it is bright. As the title might suggests, these themes involve change in its strange complications, namely how a relationship can reconfigure a person, and how the end of a relationship can be equally seismic, not to mention the ways in which we stay the same no matter how strong the external forces might be. “Light up, sun down / find a big block to walk around / where all the concrete knows your pain,” as one verse goes. “Old friends, same talk / breaking down off of Eastern Park / where all the benches know my name / when all the brightest colours seem to fade // It ain’t too late to change again / no, it ain’t to late to change.”

‘Change’ is out now and available from the usual places.

Hockitay – half smile

“”I’m not sure what I want / Except not wanting at all.” So sings Hockitay on latest single ‘half smile’, a deceptively downbeat line on what might be the Montreal artist’s warmest track to date. Hockitay’s 2026 releases have hinted towards this sound, with the almost eerie ‘buttons‘ striving for humanity in the algorithmic present, and ‘two crows‘ looking for hopeful omens to point towards a better future, both songs disillusioned with the world yet struggling for reprieve. A casual listen to ‘half smile’ suggests this struggle might have come good, the sound full of apparent heart and fondness. Though dig a little deeper and it seems the dismay might have just found a new focus. Because, as the above line shows, there’s an existential confusion to at play, the intimacy not so much straight romance as a kind of confession.

Aw baby, don’t cry
I say this with love
I’m not sure what I want
Except not wanting at all

Watch the video directed by David S. Blouin & Buvard and featuring Sékou and Myriam Doumbia, & René Bazinet:

‘half smile’ is out now via Future Gods and available from Bandcamp.

Jordan Sand – Baby with the Sail

Known for her talents with the bowed double bass, string player and singer Jordan Sand has long supported the vision of others, collaborating on everything from film scores to SNL appearances. But it was only after an extended hiatus in making music that her own solo vision started to take shape. Upon her return, Sand found her process and sensibilities had shifted, with the desire to plan and prepare falling away in favour of a more intuitive, impressionistic approach. Sand’s debut solo full-length Baby Ghost feels like the culmination of this new era. A release recorded in single takes and eschewing overdubs and edits, it is what has been described as a “spectral song cycle set within the transition space between life and death.” Lead track ‘Baby in the Sails’ hints at the power of such a style, the song exploring the tension between silence and intensity as it progresses from spacious beginning towards a bold, dissonant conclusion. The video, made in collaboration Berlin-based photographer and videographer Juliane Schütz, offers a visual representation of this mood, presenting a series of images which play like memories as experienced in the liminal space between this life and whatever comes next.

Baby Ghost is set for release on the 2nd October via Hallow Ground and you can pre-order it now.

June McDoom – Without You

June McDoom first came to our attention with her self-titled EP in 2022. We were taken with how the New York-based artist took “relatively simple folk blueprints and weave[d] whole worlds of sound around them,” describing her style as “a constantly shifting collage of her influences, warm and rich and strangely dream-like.” Following another EP and a double EP compilation release, McDoom has now signed with Jagjaguwar and is preparing to release her debut full-length. Titled Follow the Light, and recorded with partner and long-time collaborator Evan Wright, the album promises to double down on the otherworldly atmosphere, which the press notes liken to that liminal space you slip into just before sleep. Lead single ‘Without You’ offers an initial peek at what to expect, a dreamily romantic track that pokes the tender spot that is the realisation of how important a loved one is. “The ending celebrates the awareness and commitment to never take that person for granted,” McDoom explains, “because it’s never too late to change how you’ve been.”

Thavoron – Blurry tattoos

The work of Seattle-based Cambodian-American artist Thavoron has always possessed a cinematic edge, painting vivid if at times challenging pictures of a person search for their true identity with a rich, R&B-inflected pop sound. But latest single ‘Blurry tattoos’ takes things a step further, drawing inspiration from acts like FKA twigs and Kelela to offers sound that’s unapologetic in its widescreen drama and longing. The accompanying video, directed by Thavoron and Maddie Ludgate, even begins with a TMZ-style celeb report before moving through dance numbers and surreal nocturnal landscape, furthering the themes through filmic shots and choreography.

‘Blurry tattoos’s is out now via Trailing Twelve and available from the usual places.

Tough Old Bird – I Was a Giant

“Continuing to display the newly electrified version of the project, the track sees the Corrigans and co. straddle the traditional and the contemporary, maintaining the narrative and emotional heft of classic folk while always striding forwards.” So we wrote of ‘Shape of Our Love’, the second single (after ‘Wednesday’s Child‘) from Tough Old Bird that saw the Buffalo outfit push its traditionally folk-centric sound towards more rock-adjacent territory. However, do not be fooled, Tough Old Bird is still a folk project at heart, something new single ‘I Was a Giant’ certainly attests. After realising the track was resisting attempts to arrange it as a full-band piece, they decided to strip the sound right back to their folk roots, leaving only Nathan Corrigan on vocals and acoustic guitar, with usual drummer Ricky Bechard (usually the band’s drummer) lending a second acoustic guitar. The result proves that sometimes less is more, the relatively sparse arrangement carrying an intimacy that might be overpowered in a busier style, and displays the confidence of the project as a whole. Tough Old Bird have not pivoted to a new sound so much as expanded their armoury, and are now equipped to tackle whatever emotional palette any given song demands.

V.V. Lightbody – Practice Smiling

V.V. Lightbody, the project of Chicago songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and collaborator per excellence Vivian McConnell, returns this October with Period Piece, her third full-length, via Egghunt Records. The record sees McConnell take full control of production, crafting inventive indie folk songs that morph and shift with a chameleonic playfulness. There are also contributions from an impressive list of friends, including Sam Cantor (aka Minor Moon), Emma Hospelhorn (Em Spel), Macie Stewart and Cassandra Jenkins. We got a first taste late last year with lead single ‘Best Problem’, and now V.V. Lightbody has officially announced the album with another track, ‘Practice Smiling’. Light and danceable but with an edge of anxiety, the song was written in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, when everyone (and especially professional musicians) stepped out excited but blinking and unsure of themselves after a period of forced isolation. “In that moment,” McConnell describes, “I so clearly felt the passage of time and a surprising nervousness that had built up in my mind and body, forcing me to reassess my social confidence which I feel like I am still gaining back.”

The post Weekly Listening: August 2026 #2 appeared first on Various Small Flames.

First single ‘cowboy bebop & eric’s trip’ gave a glimpse of this strange phoenix’s initial lift from the flames. What we labelled “a characteristically off-the-wall and hyperactive slice of electronic (anti-)pop that comes with all the playfulness and intensity of its predecessors,” the track found Wood attempting (and, according to him, failing) to write a jangly, guitar-centred pop song and instead end up with “a glitchy mess” of which he was nevertheless proud. applied communications made its name charting its own unique path, and this has not changed in the intervening years. Decades have passed, life has gone on, yet still this irrepressible creativity has persisted.

With the album on the horizon, applied communications has returned with new single ‘return of jafar’. Crafted from the trademark synths, the song sits in the sweet spot between unapologetic nostalgia and contemporary neurosis, its tone unafraid of self-deprecation yet so bright and bouncy that it seems to simultaneously conquer it. Comparisons for something so idiosyncratic are more or less a non-starter, but if you imagine the centre of a Venn diagram consisting of early Casiotone For the Painfully Alone, Emperor X and Dan Deacon, you might be getting halfway close to the vibe.

applied communications bites the big one will be released on the 25th September via Rare Noodles and Bar/None Records and you can pre-order it via the applied communications Bandcamp page.

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Max Wood’s applied communications made a splash back in the noughties, with albums like africa baby, yeah yeah yeah and uhhh sort of winning attention with their singular personality and often chaotic arrangements, though subsequently turned away from music for the next two decades. Only, in a turn of events the 2005-era Wood couldn’t have ever imagined, a TikTok-user-cum-internet-archaeologist unearthed the old releases and revived interest, essentially resuscitating applied communications twenty years after its apparent death. After a pair of EPs in recent times, Wood is now preparing a full-length, and latest single ‘cowboy bebop & eric’s trip’ gives a glimpse at this strange phoenix as it rises from the flames. A characteristically off-the-wall and hyperactive slice of electronic (anti-)pop that comes with all the playfulness and intensity of its predecessors. “I sometimes find myself trying to fit into groups or scenes that seem cool to me, even if (especially if??) I’m going to flail and be weird and feel rejected and get depressed,” Wood explains of the track. “I didn’t mean to write a song about that dynamic, but I think that’s what happened here. I also just wanted to try making a jangly guitar-centered indie rock song because I’ve never been able to pull that off before. I still didn’t pull it off, but I’m proud of the glitchy mess that resulted from the attempt.”

atmos bloom – Everything

London-based duo atmos bloom are set to return this summer with Everythingness, a brand new album on Spirit Goth Records which looks to build upon the dreamy, shoegaze-inflected bedroom pop aesthetic of their previous release Flora. There’s an inherently nostalgic sensibility to this style of music, but Tilda Gratton and Curtis Paterson craft something caught between reflection and forward motion, charting the sometimes difficult space between youth and adulthood, looking to push life in new directions while pining for the old days too. Lead single and not quite title track ‘Everything’ embodies this mood, capturing the sense of flux which marks the entire release. ‘Everything’ explores “the impossible task of trying to be everything all at once, balancing all that life throws at you whilst trying to find yourself and your place amidst it all,” the band explain. “The song explores young adulthood and figuring out the transition between adolescence and womanhood, working through a mountain of contradictory advice and solutions. ‘Everything’ feels like walking a tightrope, wanting to do one thing for one reason and something else for another, knowing each decision pulls you further in a different direction.”

Everythingness will be released on the 24th July via Spirit Goth Records and you can pre-order it now.

Atta Boy – Full Cloud

Back in May we introduced Silt, the forthcoming full-length from LA indie rock outfit Atta Boy with ‘Oh, Mama’, “a song,” as we put it, “which holds up the unique force that is motherly love as something as organic and ever-present as the natural world itself.” With the album’s release now less than a month away, Atta Boy have returned with ‘Full Cloud’ to further establish its mood and themes. With a characteristically upbeat pop-inflected rock style, the single navigates a difficult relationship and all its hidden currents. The tension between the slow suffocation of dependency and the fear of drifting apart (“Leave me alone / Don’t make me your lifeboat,” as one telling verse goes). There might not be a solution within the frame of the track, but it is cathartic to voice such frustrations all the same.

I live here with a full cloud
That never learned to let go of the rain
So it held onto every memory
I am not a cloud
So I will never understand
The very burden of the skies
And all your enemies

Silt will be released on the 26th June and you can pre-order it now.

Grace Cummings – My God

This summer celebrated Australian songwriter Grace Cummings will release Bloodhorse!, the much anticipated follow-up to her acclaimed third album Ramona. “A bloodhorse is a horse expected to be a winner,” Cummings explains of the title, “but they can often also be temperamental, fearful, fragile and easily broken. Sometimes I feel like I’m a trapped animal. And, when I go to sleep, sometimes it’s like I’m in the gate, twitching. And as soon as I open my eyes, I’m fucking running.” Such fight-or-flight energy drives the record, Cummings leaving no stone unturned in her exploration of her own dreams and dreads, no matter how hideous or provocative the result might be. Yet such honesty is less cheap provocation and more an attempt to regain agency within an otherwise restrictive existence, as though to describe the suffocating sensation of living in the plainest of terms is in some way lessen its hold. Listen to single ‘My God’ now, a song “about hatred, jealousy, rage,” as Cumming continues. “The God here is the dark forces that are wrapping around us, that we scroll through, the toxic energy that binds us together in this modern world, and the fear we feed it every day.”

Watch the video filmed and directed by Ben Ulitzka Portnoy below:

Bloodhorse! will be released on the 14th August on ATO Records and you can pre-order it now.

koleżanka – Lessons in Textiles

Aside from her work as part of Foyer Red, Kristina Moore also records solo under the moniker koleżanka, most recently with 2023 full-length Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes on Bar/None Records which emerged from the COVID era to offer “a delicate line between peace and unease,” as we described in our review. “A sensation which fades against the wider tragedy of the pandemic yet resonates deeply all the same,” we continued, “for life’s relentless motion eased for some, and new ways of living began to suggest themselves.” Now koleżanka is back with ‘Lessons in Textiles’, a new single which draws on Moore’s interest in knitting to weave a metaphor for the personal transformations which so often accompany grief. Namely the technique of unravelling (or ‘frogging’) a knit in order to rework the stitches, the song describing a person not only undone by loss but slowly fashioned into something new.

Leilani Patao – kiddy scissors

Last year Hawaiian-American songwriter, broadcaster and engineer Leilani Patao put out daisy, an EP on Audio Antihero which shunned social media and streaming services and thus came to possess, as we wrote in our review, “that emotional authenticity which marked the earlier generations of bedroom pop which relied on little beyond word of mouth” (making the list of our favourite releases of 2025 as a result). Capitalising on the success of the release, Patao is now sharing a brand new deluxe edition of the EP, with the original album tracks joined by three new songs as well as remixes from the likes of Benjamin Shaw and Magana. One of the new cuts, ‘kiddy scissors’, has been unveiled now to whip up excitement, and the song is every bit as tender and genuine as fans will have come to expect. A celebration of “queer joy and trans love,” the single is in many ways the embodiment of Leilani Patao more generally. A song able to evoke the grandest of emotions without resorting to melodrama or spectacle, instead opting to elevate the ordinary, intimate moments of the everyday.

Nathan El – Jubilee // Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me

Recording under the moniker Nathan El, Pittsburgh-based agriculturalist and musician Nathan Blake creates folk music which looks backwards while moving forward, taking the traditional forms of the genre and reshaping them to conjure something new. Latest release Jubilee // Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me demonstrates just how Nathan El achieves this, Blake adding ambient tones to deepen and distort classic arrangements, with Claire Sweeney adding supporting vocals as well as fiddle and harmonium. An American traditonal, ‘Jubilee’ opens as something slow and reflective, though kicks into a toe-tapping alt-country number before returning back to its spacious textures, evoking both the romance and melancholy of humble living as time ticks away. ‘Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me’ reimagines an old English song to similar effect, though this time favours a richer palette despite the aching longing at its heart. Both songs, much like the Nathan El project itself, aim to reconjure the past within the present, unable or unwilling to relinquish that which used to be, and in the process blur the distinction between love and loss.

Jubilee // Her Bright Smile Still Haunts Me is out now and available from Bandcamp.

Richard Tripps – Stone Eating Animals

“Channel[s] the lo-fi aesthetic of The Range of Light, The Velvet Underground, White Fence and early Oh Sees in order to better evoke the environment where the songs were conceived,” we wrote of Richard Tripps‘s 2024 release Between the Morning, Tripps recording a batch of material in his tent cabin in Big Sur and allowing the sense of place to bleed into the songs themselves. This July, Tripps will share a brand new EP which collects the last of the tracks from that period, and single ‘Stone Eating Animals’ shows the result is every bit as evocative and atmospheric as we’ve come to expect. A playful, swaggering slice of slacker rock from the coastal mountains of California, delivered with something between carefree buoyancy and a more ambigious sense of reflection.

‘Stone Eating Animals’ is out now and available from the usual places. The EP will be released on the 12th July.

Taifa Nia – Spellz

You might know Bay Area artist Taifa Nia as the frontman of Same Girls, guitar player in Ricky Lake, founder of Portion Club or collaborator with artists like Brontez Purnell, though he has now decided to record solo under his own name as a newly personal creative outlet. Debut EP Avaratia shows the kind of honesty which marks his dream pop-inflected style of indie rock. “Avaratia is the latin term for greed,” Nia explains. “I look back on this time of my life and I feel ashamed for the level of greed I had. I didn’t realize I had so much, I had creative people around me, I had effortless love that transmuted into effortless art, and everyday I was surrounded by a place that felt the same way. Yet for some reason I was always looking for more, a new home, a bigger stage, bigger achievements, more money than I needed.” The album follows this mindset towards its alienating end, finding Nia slowly being humbled by his surroundings, and coming to realise he’s moved away from himself in pursuit of material luxuries and acclaim. Listen to single ‘Spellz’ now:

Van Chamberlain – The Right Line

Van Chamberlain are continuing to release singles from their forthcoming full-length As Far As the Eye Can See, following tracks like ‘Miracle Drug‘, ‘Solutions‘ and ‘Running Through the World‘ with latest cut, ‘The Right Line’. The record has possessed a decidedly bittersweet tone to date and the new single is certainly no exception, showing that life’s big questions can be confronted with richness and groove. “There was a point where it seemed like everyone around me was going through it at the same time,” Van Chamberlain explains. “I didn’t have any of the answers, but I wanted to be a positive force. This is a song about wanting to give the people around you a reason to smile. It’s easy to write a song about what you’re going through. This time I wanted to write a song for everyone else.”

Wild Pink – Round Of Applause At The End Of The World

Following on from their critically acclaimed 2024 album Dulling the Horns, Wild Pink are returning this summer with brand new full-length Still Coming Down. Much water has passed beneath the bridge from when we first covered the band over a decade ago, with lead John Ross overcoming serious illness and later becoming a father, not to mention a changing musical style which has veered from raucous indie rock to more cinematic, electronic-based arrangements and back again. Yet throughout this time, there’s always been a consistent spirit to the Wild Pink project which is rooted in Ross’s distinctive lyricism. Still Coming Down retains this spirit while pushing the writing further than ever, capturing contemporary America in all of its chaos, confusion and mundanity. Like DeLillo, Ellroy and Mailer before him, lead single ‘Round Of Applause At The End Of The World’ sees Ross succumb to the masculine urge to write about JFK, Oswald and Jack Ruby, painting a swirling picture of conspiracy that undermines even the most trusted facets of society.

Still Coming Down will be released on the 21st August via Fire Talk and you can pre-order it now.

Wolfschmidt – whaler

“An epic alt rock number which faces up to feelings of stasis with a combination of hope and fatalism, looking to break free even while the same cycles seem to repeat.” So we wrote of Wolfschmidt‘s recent single ‘file’, the Gothenburg outfit utilising a propulsive quiet-loud dynamic to achieve cathartic heights. With album INSUFFICIENT FAILURE coming soon, the band have returned with follow-up ‘whaler’ to further introduce themselves. Again it’s the drama and energy which first grabs the attention, but, revolving around ideas of self-sacrifice for the greater good, there’s a meaty thematic side to the track too. A collision of chaos and ordered flow not unlike the marine environment suggested by the title, with the listener invited to take a deep breath and submerge themselves too.

Dive in
Meet me where I end
And you start
Whale fall
Dive in
I descend
Where you are

‘whaler’ is out now and available from the usual places. INSUFFICIENT FAILURE is coming soon.

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Only, the result might prove surprising. Because though physically confined in time and space, Moore found her mind departing elsewhere. As though only in quiet can memories blossom into their true richness. “Its 1995, before the roads were paved,” she sings in opener ‘Koszmary’, harking back to a childhood in Phoenix, “the dust storms in July testing our tiny legs / laughing at the danger then / watch our bodies disappear.” The song also introduces the album’s distinctive sound, where ethereal and idiosyncratic details coalesce into a kind of carnivalesque playfulness.

The record returns to Arizona in the way of a dreaming mind, a repeated image bubbling to the surface. Take ‘Canals of Our City’, a dispatch from the life of a teenage crust punk which describes a youth spent in the canals of Phoenix with something like fondness. But then the second half moves on to the murder of a boyfriend’s cousin and the fracturing impact of such violence. “You got the call that he was gone / murder in the first degree,” Moore sings as though suddenly back there again, “disappeared for days without a phone, without a warning / cruel are all the ways this world will give you life, unravelling.”

But of course the mind is far from a one channel package, and stillness lets in all sorts of broadcasts. Tracks like ‘Mania’ offer a view into the less welcome visitors, while ‘Slapstick’ dwells on the uncertainty of past social encounters. The theme is continued in ‘Goliath’, a spacious, woozy track where vacuous “pleasantries at a function” descend into the search for an exit, and the yearning for solitude overtakes everything.

go
its ok that you wanted to
fall back into that thing you do
go
it’s ok that you want to go
to a place you can be alone

What emerges is a delicate line between peace and unease, a sensation which fades against the wider tragedy of the pandemic yet resonates deeply all the same. For life’s relentless motion eased for some, and new ways of living began to suggest themselves. “Wander to the window / a patch of sun to see / softening the first snow / softening in me,” as Moore sings on ‘Saddle Up, Cowboy’, as though the slow movements of those days brought physical changes. But then songs like ‘Cheers!’ reveal the anxiety that follows into the quiet too, and of course there were all the good times to mourn.

It is the stripped back ‘A Body’ which reflects on this experience most fully, probing into the strangeness of living as both a physical object and mental state. If Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes discovers anything from its time in isolation, it’s that the wheels of consciousness keep turning, both a blessing and a curse. “Where does the mind go when a body’s finished?” asks the final line, as though having experienced the kaleidoscopic potential of thought and memory. It seems suddenly impossible that something something so vivid and powerful can merely cease to be.

Alone with the Sound the Mind Makes is out now via Bar/None Records and you can get it from the koleżanka Bandcamp page.

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Later this year, Justus Proffit will release the resulting album, SpeedStar, on Hoboken-based label Bar/None Records. In anticipation, he has released the record’s first single, ‘Burning the Ground,’ a pop song that combines influences from the last three decades—from Elliott Smith to Hovvdy.

Written and recorded during a stay with a friend on Guemes Island, WA, the song is inspired by the wildfires that were burning in the area at the time. The image of the fires become a metaphor for the juxtaposing themes of impermanence, destruction and control, and draws parallels between the beauty and chaos of the natural world with the beauty and chaos that constitute a life.

“It’s about destroying yourself and destroying things around you,” Proffit explains of the song in a Q&A with FLOOD Magazine, “but also with destruction comes rebuilding. Basically understanding that there is always divine beauty in complete chaos, and it’s all perfectly balanced.”

It could be beautiful
Completely in control

SpeedStar will be released via Bar/None Records on 20th August. Preorder it now from the Justus Proffit Bandcamp page, including on 12″ LP and cassette.

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After several releases in the intervening years, including 2019’s Playin’ On a Cloud, Pardoner are back with a brand new record, Came Down Different. This time to be released via Bar/None Records., the album digs further into the Pardoner aesthetic, adding an angular menace that juxtaposes with the slacker vibes and sardonic delivery to create a distinctively deadpan style.

First single ‘Donna Says’ provides the first glimpse at the approach. Opening with cloudy distortion and a foreboding clamour of noise, the song kicks into an almost sunny rhythm. But beneath the surface lurks something darker and heavier. Freeland’s lyrics are as barbed as ever too, but set against everything else they don’t come off as critical so much as fatalistic. Pardoner conjure the world we live in—often strange, always infuriating, yet crushingly banal too. What option is there but a kind of ironic surrender?

Am I falling out of favor?
Am I maybe not your flavor? Pour my heart onto the table
Trade it in for cash
Because I want the money
Oh yeah I want it bad

The song comes complete with a video directed by Katayoon Yousefbigloo, which really excavates the moods and themes of the track and maintains the 90s aesthetic too.

Came Down Different is out via Bar/None Records on the 14th May and you can pre-order it now from the Pardoner Bandcamp page.

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“There’s always been this crazy connection between the three of us,” explains Knight. “We clicked musically, but we also felt like we’d known each other for years. We were all outsider kids in school who went through the same coming-of-age thing. When I think of a band, this is how I think it should be.”

Together Rose Dorn make indie rock songs that feel like both commiserations and celebrations of this otherness, resulting in an aesthetic that the band’s bio describes as a combination of “elements of bedroom rock, twangy desert gaze, and melancholic California pop.” After two short EPs, Rose Dorn have just released their debut full-length, Days You Were Leaving, a record which utilises this feeling of being different

Lead single ‘Champ’ sets the scene, a sweet and earnest pop song about the connection between the band members, a gaze back at the high school digital friendship that started it all. “At some point I realized I was dissociating,” says Knight, “cut off from the world around me, only able to feel peace when I was actively connecting with my two best friends through a screen. Nothing else really mattered.” The song comes complete with a video, the debut music video from director Julia Ling Kelleher, which sees a chain of dominoes snake around and tumble in perfect synchrony.

In comparison the opening of ‘Shaking’ feels big and bold, a left-field pop song that sounds like it could’ve been an underground hit in the early 90s. But after around forty seconds things slide to a halt, Knight taking over vocal duties as the guitars subside into a dreamy sway. The song morphs again towards the end, keeping things fresh and dynamic across its three minute run-time. Thematically the song is darker than it sounds. As the band explain, it’s “about a select few experiences we’ve seen spin people out of control, and the coping mechanisms that have brought them back to reality […] from the rejection by a supposed soulmate to the death of a loved one.”

Another song that deals with a sense of detachment, ‘Collar’ finds Knight pining for someone long-gone and the explores the rootless feeling of lacking a clear direction for the future.

I feel like a stray dog
with a beautiful collar
on a beautiful lawn
keep searching for someone who i’ve lost
but there’s no signs on poles
telling me to come home

There’s a considerable degree of diversity across the album. From the hushed slow gathering of opener ‘Big Thunder’, to the short shot of LVL UP-style slacker pop of ‘LRP’ and ‘HYC’, Rose Dorn continue to surprise throughout. ‘Deathwish’ is a standout, all dreamy sweetness meets a kind of morbid matter-of-factness (Rose Dorn exploring their sense of otherness with lines like “Shoelace ‘round her neck, keeps her head on tight, she says she’s talked to god, they’ve been staying up all night”). There’s also a really cool trading of vocals where Knight’s lines sound like dialogue in a short story, giving the whole thing the feel of a strange narrated daydream.

Talking of dreamy, ‘Heaven II’ feels fogged by a sleepy torpor, sparse guitar and cooed vocals combining with minimal percussion to create a kind of slo-mo lo fi pop, while closing track ‘Wish’ is also content to take its own time, although burns bright with a much fuller sound. It’s illustrative of Days You Were Leaving in lots of ways, not least in the way it approaches reflective themes in its own unique, bittersweet, way. It shows that the otherness mentioned at the beginning can often be your greatest strength, and that Rose Dorn have come to value it amidst the shifting seas of life in the twenty-first century. The band put it best in their notes on the album:

“This record is about coming to terms with the complexities of life in time, of learning to love and accept where you’ve been and where you’re going while remembering to love and accept where you are.”

Days You Were Leaving is out now on Bar/None Records. Get it from the Bar None Records webstore or the Rose Dorn Bandcamp page. The band are also playing some West coast shows soon. Check the dates below and head along if you’re able:

Thursday, September 19th – Zebulon – Los Angeles, CA – Ex Hex, Seth Bogart
Friday, September 20th – Starline Social Club / Crystal Cavern- Oakland, CA – Fake Fruit
Saturday, September 21st – Arcata, CA Blondies w/ Spirit Notes , OMW2HEAVEN
Sunday, September 22nd – Portland, OR – Vinyl Underground w/ OMW2HEAVEN
Tuesday, September 24th – Olympia, WA – Le Voyeur – w/ Flying Fish Cove, OMW2HEAVEN
Wednesday, September 25th – Seattle, WA – Vera Project, w/ Dogbreth, Bread Pilot
Friday, September 27th – Boise, ID – Castle Greyskull w/ Buttstuff & OMW2HEAVEN
Saturday, September 28th – Moscow, ID – Modest Music Fest
Monday, September 30th – Reno, NV – Holland Project – w/ OMW2HEAVEN
Wednesday, October 2nd – Las Vegas, NV – TBD
Thursday, October 3rd – Phoenix, AZ – Trunk Space w/ Like Diamonds, Gabi JR., OMW2HEAVEN

Photo by Derec Patrick

The post Rose Dorn – Days You Were Leaving appeared first on Various Small Flames.

There was also a festive Emperor X EP, Jetzt Christmas, which certainly offers a unique take on Christmas. Current highlight is ‘The 2013th Noel’ which begins as a spoken word electronic piece before morphing into a “cover” of ‘The First Noel’, substituting the line “…born is the king of Israel.” with a whole host of references (ranging from the general of the new Free Syrian Army to the captain of FC Porto). It’s less a Christmas song than a 2013 version of Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, and worth your time even now Christmas has gone.

Much earlier last year, Emperor X also released a live album, Nineteen Live Recordings, a compilation of excerpts recorded between 2008 and 2013. Maheny traveled between venues by bus carrying only his guitar and a bag of effects pedals and the results are amazing.  The album was released on Plan-It-X Records.

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